According to Peter Stanford the term originates from the Italiancatafalco, which means scaffolding.[3] However, the Oxford English Dictionary says the word is "[o]f unknown derivation; even the original form is uncertain; French pointing to -fald- or -falt- , Italian to -falc- , Spanish to -fals." The most notable Italian catafalque was the one designed for Michelangelo by his fellow artists in 1564.[4] An elaborate and highly decorated roofed surround for a catafalque,[5] common for grand funerals of the Baroque era, may be called a castrum doloris.

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Large processions have followed the catafalques of Popes. In 1590 the households of the cardinals carried the catafalque of Pope Sixtus V. The bier, decorated with gold cloth, was followed by "confraternities, religious orders, students of seminaries and colleges, orphans and mendicants".[6] In 1963 a million people filed past the catafalque of Pope John XXIII, which had been carried in procession to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.[7]

Thirteen years after his death, the remains of Voltaire were transferred on a catafalque to the Panthéon in Paris, a building dedicated to the great men of the French nation. It bore the inscription: "Poet, philosopher, historian, he made a great step forward in the human spirit. He prepared us to become free."[8]

^According to Robert Cromie in his book The Great Chicago Fire, copyright 1958, Lincoln's catafalque was in Woods' Museum in Chicago and was burned in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. However, Lincoln had funeral ceremonies during stops at several major cities as his remains were taken by train from Washington to Springfield, Illinois for burial. Cromie probably meant the catafalque used for ceremonies held at Chicago, rather than the one built for his state funeral in DC and retained at the U.S. Capitol.